I nod. "I don't want you to leave Bright." I scrub my hands over my face and try to breathe. "I hate that idea."
"Could have fooled me." She says and walks to her tiny closet that is busting at the seams.
"Look I know I've been distant-"
"Distant? Seriously? You are so far away my echo wouldn’t travel."
Her verbal slap hurt, but fuck man I have reasons for being distant. "I just didn't want us to cross the boundaries again. I don't want to hurt you, God I hate knowing I have already."
"Oh wow Noah. Your denial is epic, profound even. Nice job." She claps dramatically before shoving shoes, a lot of shoes in a bag.
"Denial? How am I in denial? For fucks sake, I am trying to keep this about work! You were hired to be my sponsor and help me cope, and you do."
She pauses after closing herLouis Vuittonand looks at me with a strange glare, shock maybe? Whatever it is, I crossed a line by saying she was doing a good job and she looked ready to strike.
"I do a good job? Do you have any idea how much you are paying for my good job?" She looks at me, hands on her hips. "No? A dollar a week. That's my fee. Know why? Because I have millions in my bank account. What I earn on market interest alone every year could support my shopping addiction. I am only here because I want to help."
She grabs her sweat pants things and a tank top and starts stripping in front of me and my tongue is thick, my dick stirs and I am trying so hard to focus.I am only here because I want to help.
"Why?" I ask, the lust gone momentarily and in its place curiosity.
"I just told you why."
I growl in irritation. "I mean why do you want to help me?"
She pulls her tank top down and slips into her flip flops before pulling her hair up in this weird sexy knot thing that leaves all the loose hair on her neck and around her face…
"Can you stop being a perve for two minutes?" She asks bringing me back to the present.
"Want my attention? Stop putting on a show in front of me then. Tell me why, of all the things to do with your time, why help me? I'm a spoiled rich asshole right?" I can feel the tension, shits getting to crazy… Fuck I need to calm out, calm her , anything but let her leave.
Yeah, stay so I can mind fuck you some more. Smooth Noah.
"Did you even bother to read the bio that Tay gave you about me?" She asks and I follow her to the bathroom where she washes her face.
"No. I figured I would give you the same courtesy as you did me."I put the folder in the bottom of my work out clothes drawer and forgot about it.
She gets to her knees and starts putting her lotions and make up in her overnight bag and I can't help but smirk at how she packs for 'just a night'.
Even mad as hell, she gets to me. Fuck, I am fucked.
"I am responsible for Brittany dying." She says and looks at me, tears in her eyes. I don't know what I expected when she asked. That was not it. My heart and dick both hit the pause button.
"Our parents were out of town like usual and I had been drinking by the pool with some guys off campus. They invited us to a Sigma party that night. Brit was nothing like me. She was a book nerd and loved doing charities and working with children. She was busting ass in her junior year to get a scholarship to prove a point. She was taking child development classes…" She shakes her head and wipes the tears from her eyes. "She was going to be something special."
"She begged to come with us that night. I even did her makeup and hair and dressed her in my clothes so she looked older. She loved it, she always wished she was more like me, where I had wished I was more like her." She sets the bag on the counter near the sink and sits on the side of the tub. She looks so small and sweet and broken. There's a part of me that wants to protect her, the other side says run you fuckin idiot.
She looks at me, reserved and determined to tell me her worst moment. The same moment we all have in some form or another that makes, or breaks us. "I was upstairs, getting railed by two guys."
She shakes her head in shame, I want to shake mine to free that fucking image. Shit makes me postal.
"We drank, smoked some weed. One started kissing me the other went down my pants and we just let it happen. Hell, I knew back then I had a problem. I knew I used sex to avoid intimacy, crazy right? I would rather fuck than ever talk feelings or face them. I partied all night with them. It was some twisted shit and as much as it sickens me to admit it, I got off on the more they did."
She sighs, and I know, know something bad happens next. "I woke up hung-over the next morning, dressed and went looking for Brit." Tears spill over and I fall to my knees in front of her to hold her.
She pushes me away though and stands, stepping backward in to the tub. "She was tied to a bed. Her wrists were raw and bleeding, her face was swollen and bloody. Her legs…" She shakes her head and I know what she saw. I have seen this scene a thousand different times. "They were bruised on the inside of her thighs and the bed was covered in blood and semen and tears."
I swallow back bile and try to mask my discomfort at the story she is telling me. "My parents rushed home and met us at the hospital. Dad had lawyers there and detectives. Eight Sigma Tai members were arrested and charged with forcible rape of a minor. Sexual assault in the first degree and a slew of others. My dad had our lawyer throw the book at them."